Homemade Apple Pie
When the holidays approach, people typically buckle down and decorate, cook, clean, and if they have a gaggle of kids as do we, they clean some more just to try to keep up.
And with cooking at the forefront of chores during these crazy times, we may find ourselves making the usual pumpkin pie, pecan pie or perhaps other fruit pies, such as apple, cranberry, combinations of the two, and more.
Now, I love a good pumpkin pie, and there is none finer than that cooked by my wife every Thanksgiving from our Halloween pumpkins. After they are roasted, the Mrs. will puree the tender flesh; excess water squeezed out through cheesecloth, and set aside to be used.
At this point you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, that’s not a pumpkin pie in the picture. This guy’s nuts.” And you would be correct on both counts. I am neither sane nor representing the photograph in this column sufficiently well as of yet.
While my wife makes the pumpkin pie, I make the good old-fashioned American apple pie. And for my wife, who likes tons of dough, I try to make it extra doughy. Freshly heated throughout, it goes amazingly well with vanilla ice cream, from the eponymous local artisan creamery making their own goods from their herd of dairy cattle.
Come to think of it, I don’t think that I need to wait for the holidays to enjoy fresh ice cream and fruit pie. I may just have to jump into this right about now. Enjoy below a good-old traditional apple pie recipe.
Homemade Apple Pie
Ingredients
Dough:
- 5 ½ ounces all purpose flour
- 8 ounces butter
- 1/4 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup ice water
Filling:
- 3 granny smith apples
- 3 golden deliciuous apples
- 5 ounces sugar
- 1 1/4 ounce cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Pie shine:
- 1 part simple syrup
- 1 cup corn syrup
Instructions
- Many people work this dough in a mixer or food processor. I would recommend rubbing the butter into the flour by hand. Stop before the butter becomes completely mealy, as many apple pie recipes indicate. If you do this right, you will have paper-thin sheets of butter throughout the dough, and when it is cooked, the moisture in the butter turns to steam, and gives you nice little flaky pockets, AKA flaky pie crust.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and add the water 15 ml (1 Tbsp) at a time. You don’t want the dough too wet, and when you can roll it up, wrap it and put in the fridge for 1 hour. Remove, and cut into 2 equal pieces, for top and bottom.
- Combine the filling ingredients, roll the dough into a 9” (23 cm) pie pan, fill and top with second piece. Crimp and brush with an egg wash.
- Crimp and cut vents in top. Bake at 168 °C (335 °F) for around one hour. At the 30-minute mark, start brushing with the pie shine, and do this one more time at the 45-minute mark.
- Remove when the apples offer no resistance to a knife inserted in the middle.
- Eat your pie, take a nap, and then go for a nice long jog!
Notes
Related: 27 Quintessential American Foods
Related: 29 American Dessert Recipes to Try Out
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Related: Peach & Apple Crisp
